Candler Welcomes Six Visiting Professors

With a new academic year on the horizon, Candler prepares to welcome six renowned scholars to campus as distinguished visiting faculty in a variety of areas, ranging from systematic theology and New Testament to multifaith studies.

Kwok Pui Lan, former William F. Cole Professor of Christian Theology and Spirituality at Episcopal Divinity School, will serve as distinguished visiting professor of theology for the 2017-2018 academic year. An internationally known scholar, Kwok was president of the American Academy of Religion in 2011, cofounded the network Pacific, Asian, North American Asian Women in Theology and Ministry, and has held leadership roles in the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) and the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning. She will teach two courses in systematic theology: Feminist Theologies from the Global South and Spirituality for the Contemporary World.

David Bartlett, J. Edward and Ruth Cox Lantz Professor Emeritus of Christian Communication at Columbia Theological Seminary and Lantz Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Yale Divinity School, will serve as distinguished visiting professor of New Testament during the spring 2018 semester, and will teach two courses.

Walter Fluker, Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Ethical Leadership at Boston University School of Theology, will teach a January-term course on Howard Thurman. Fluker also serves as the editor of the Howard Thurman Papers Project and as director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Initiative for the Development of Ethical Leadership at Boston University School of Theology.

David Ford, Emeritus Regius Professor of Divinity and Fellow at Selwyn College at the University of Cambridge, will serve in spring of 2018 as distinguished visiting professor in the Alonzo L. McDonald Family Chair on the Life and Teachings of Jesus and Their Impact on Culture. In this role, Ford will offer two public lectures and teach a course on “Jesus and the Task of Constructive Theology.”

Esther Mombo, professor and former deputy vice chancellor of academics at St. Paul’s University in Limuru, Kenya, will serve as distinguished visiting professor at Candler during the spring 2018 semester. She is a collaborator with the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs at Georgetown University on two of their projects: the Practitioners and Faith-Inspired Development Interview Series and country-level mapping in religion and development. One of her chief areas of interest is networking among Christian and Muslim women on issues of dialogue.

Shlomo C. Pill, fellow and post-doctoral fellow in law and religion at Emory’s Center for the Study of Law and Religion, will serve as visiting assistant professor in the practice of Islamic, Jewish, and American religion and law for the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 academic years. Pill will work closely with the Leadership and Multifaith Program, a partnership between Candler and Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts directed by Assistant Professor of History of Religions and Multifaith Relations Deanna Ferree Womack.